


Target Practice

by Livia_LeRynn



Series: Rolling Stones Turn to Sand (if They Don't Find a Place to Stand) [3]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: But mostly fluff, Chillaxin, Competence Kink, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Insomnia, Sharp Shooting, Wasteland domesticity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-21 23:46:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9572204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livia_LeRynn/pseuds/Livia_LeRynn
Summary: Even when she's warm and safe against Max, Furiosa still has nights when she can't sleep.  Sometimes she lies awake and plans while she stays still and quiet to keep from disturbing him.  At least tonight, he is already awake.  Written for thethis madmaxkink prompt





	

No one batted an eye when Furiosa asked for a cot to be brought to her room. The Vuvalini and the ex-wives all knew she’d kept Max there the night before, and they all knew her bed was too small for more than one. They did however jump at the opportunity to coax a rare blush to Furiosa’s cheek, and they haven’t stopped sniffing out those opportunities ever since.

She ignores their ongoing teasing for the most part, giving them only enough notice so they know she’s not bothered by them entertaining themselves at her expense. It’s a small price to pay for whatever it is she’s getting out of this arrangement. She doesn’t have a word for it; she doesn’t need one.

It started for convenience. She knew without asking he wold be just as uncomfortable in the open dormitories as she had always been, and her team hadn’t yet managed to pick the locks on any of the other individual bedrooms. He would have slept well enough in his car in the shop, but that just felt wrong, inhospitable, undiplomatic… or maybe she just didn’t want the evening to end just yet.

So they spent that first night tangled together in a bizarre mix of chaste, intimate, and awkward. Even though they were cramped with limbs dangling off the edges of her bed, she’d fallen effortlessly to sleep like only happens when she’s been beaten to rubbish. The Buzzard vodka probably helped.

So they pushed the new cot against the stone ledge and padding that is her bed and padded the cot as well to make it almost of matching height. She's spent the twenty nights since then easily within his reach. She prefers to face the wall with her body curled so her back is pressing against his. She feels uncomfortably safe with him in her blindspot like that, comfurtable like she shouldn't feel. He could swing at her, and he does, but it's more of a wild thrashing, not meant for her, not meant for anyone. She guesses that's why she doesn't feel too guilty to sleep; it's just dangerous enough.

However, while she finds his presence comforting, he’s not a perfect fix. There are still nights when her mind races through every way that this new Green Place experiment will probably fail, and she scrambles to find mitigations for any of the multitude of impending disasters. Now she lies awake and pretends that tonight is one of those nights, that the real reason she can’t sleep isn't that Max will be gone in a couple of days. What if she misses him? He hasn’t told her yet, but the resurrection of his car is almost complete, and there was never any possibility that he would stay longer than that. She doesn’t want to deprive him of his sleep so instead of turning on her little light and working as she ordinarily would, she just lies there all twitchy and restless while she jealously listens to his shallow breaths.

She will have to relearn how to sleep alone, either that or find another sleeping partner, but she is certain that is less likely. The two Vuvalini are together, as are Cheedo and Dag. Capable flits from bed to bed, and Toast refuses everyone. Still, Furiosa is nothing if not adaptable, and her having brought Max into her space at all proves it. 

She sighs, obviously a bit to loudly because then Max comments, “Not fooling anyone.”

She sighs again. “Go back to sleep.” 

He seems to have a talent for it. He can wake up jerking in panic and then fall back into into sleep, sometimes without even opening his eyes. She doesn’t know if he's even aware he does it. After she awakes mid-nightmare, sleep itself becomes the enemy, and her fear of it snaps her awake every time she drifts too close to its edge. 

Apparently not tonight. “Can’t sleep either,” he declares even though she’s absolutely certain he was doing exactly that a couple of minutes earlier. 

He rolls towards her, and the little hairs on the back of her neck prickle as his breath rushes over her skin. She aches deep in her belly, the kind of empty aches that sobs leave in their wake. She draws her knees in and waits. His belly brushes that curve of her spine when he inhales. She can almost feel his hand hovering just beyond her skin. Max radiates heat; his presence is so warm and embracing, and… She jolts to sitting.

“Mm?” His eyes are on her, his expression irritatingly concerned in the moonlight. Maybe that’s just her mind filling in the shadows; it’s too dark to tell.

“I have to get out,” she declares as she shoves off her blanket. 

He moves to let her out and then sits up, watching her as she dresses herself in her long cardigans and slippers by a combination of touch, moonlight, and memory. She fastens the bottoms to keep the night chill off her belly where her shirt has been hacked short. She decides against strapping on the awkward hunk of metal that passes for her prosthetic these days; she needs to breathe freely. 

“Where to?”

She doesn’t know. She wants air and open spaces, movement and destruction, lots of destruction. “Out,” she says, and Max swings his legs over the side of the cot. “You coming?”

“Mm-hm.” Max scoots to the foot of the cot so he can reach the wall where his brace is hanging off of a pipe.

“Good.” She finally turns on the her propane lamp, casting yellow light about the little room. “I need to get under you.” He’s more amused then surprised and moves as she needs when she dives under the cot. She emerges with a pistol crossbow and a handful of bolts. “How about some target practice?”

He smirks at her, mouth pinched playfully at the corners as he grunts his approval.

“Nothing with gunpowder though – don’t want to wake anyone,” Furiosa assures him. They both know gunshots in the middle of the night too well. 

She still feels rebellious when she locks her door, but there’s only Max behind her, and they aren’t doing anything wrong or even forbidden. Maybe she’s just been starved for excitement in the recent peace. Still, she winces every time Max’s brace scrapes the stone floor, and she makes a mental note to try to find him a pair of slippers that will fit over it. Maybe she doesn’t know how to live without someone or something trying to take her life from her.

### 

Furiosa opens a door at the top of a metal stepladder. “I used to bring the girls up here,” Furiosa says, not quite to anyone. The door opens up to the leads Max onto the gardens on top of the third butte. “We needed somewhere isolated where they could adjust to the outside air.”

She leads Max down a narrow path between the sections of crops. The leaves brush against her ankles as if welcoming her back. Her steps are gentle on the sandy soil; she smooths it with the balls of her feet in soft, subtle motions. 

She leads him an under-utilised section of the garden, just an open space surrounded by the stubborn greenery. The plants are less cultivated here, more wild. The night is cool but not cold, pleasant in its difference from the heat of the day. There’s just enough moonlight to not overwhelm the stars. 

She crosses the open space and then stops at a metal chest on the edge of an open space. Garden equipment, Max supposes. He doesn’t look in when she opens it. She hauls out a sandbag and checks the seams and patches before closing the chest and hoisting the bag on top. She nudges it a bit, first this way, then that, before she hums in approval and then sets herself as far from the bag as the clearing will allow.

“Best move, Fool.” Her voice is haughty, teasing but warm. 

Fool as he may be, Max obeys. He trusts her aim, even with only the moonlight to guide her, but she came here to release tension, not for him to add to it. He claims a spot just to the side, where the plants have started encroaching on the clearing, or maybe reclaiming it – he’s not sure. 

Max watches Furiosa intently as she sets herself then slips the strap holding the crossbow off her shoulder. She wraps her short arm around a lip at the front and pushes down a cocking lever with her right hand. She lets out a whisper of a grunt from the effort as she presses the crossbow against her thigh for leverage. Then she clutches the weapon against her chest while she pulls a bolt from the wrapping of her shirt and aligns it. Her mouth twitches into a faint smile that leaves her teeth still carefully concealed. She takes aim.

 _Thunk_ \- the sound is ridiculously satisfying. She holds her jaw in that certain way that means that she's pleased with her progress but not finished yet, never finished. She prepares for another shot with the same smooth, practiced serious of motions. She's all straight back, tucked elbows, soft knees, and steady gaze.

A few _thunks_ later, she pauses to rub her ribs. "Want a shot?"

“Like watching you,” which is a blatant understatement. He could watch her forever.

“I need a break, actually,” she admits. She looks down and wets her lips. “Drawing – fuck..." She rubs the barely healed muscles at the bend of her waist then stretches slowly, coaxing out her fatigue through clenched teeth and little groans. "I need to do this more often, get my strength back." Her voice is wistful, like the words aren’t really meant for him. “It can be easy again.”

Max hums sympathetically, but inside he’s standing in awe. He's never bothered to keep track of all the times he’s injured himself, and when he's found another body part not quite working properly, he's always accepted it as a fact. His knee would never bend as smoothly as it used to or support his full weight for more than a couple of seconds without the brace. His elbow would ache and pop with changes in the weather. His hand would be stubborn. His head would do whatever the fuck it wants.

He accepts the crossbow and some bolts and takes a moment to appreciate that the bolts in his hand have just been held against her chest. When he draws it without using his thigh, she huffs, which he doesn’t think he was meant to hear, but he smiles anyway. She wants so badly to be the best at everything, if not to be it, to seem to be; it's how she she's established herself and how she’s survived. He can see it in the way she approaches challenges, how her eyes fill with hunger disguised as indignation. Determination seeps out of her like sweat. 

He can almost hear her eyes roll when his first shot goes wide. _Thunk_ \- it lands in the target but just barely. His second shot matches the first but on the opposite side. He eventually adjusts to her weapon, and his bolts find their home in the centre of the sandbag. 

She muses aloud, “What’s it like, wandering from place to place?”

Max shrugs. He doesn’t remember how to be any other way. He knows he was at one time but knows it as if it were an old story belonging to someone else. Still he feels like he should say something, like she’s itching for conversation neither of them knows how to make.

Furiosa sighs and flicks the fletching on a crossbow bolt restlessly with her thumb. Max extends the crossbow to her, and she takes it without hesitation. Then she narrows her eyes at the sandbag as if it were responsible for the sand leaking from its wounds. She turns her back to it.

“What’s it like…” Max asks, “having a place.”

Furiosa draws and loads the crossbow before she speaks. “I wouldn’t know.” She spins toward the sandbag. _Thunk_. She faces him again. She doesn’t even bother observing her victory. 

“Too easy?” Max asks, less than half teasing. 

Furiosa glares at first, then looks away. She draws again, and as she aligns the bolt, and the planes of her face catch the moonlight, 

> “And I  
>  Am the arrow,  
>  The dew that flies  
>  Suicidal, at one with the drive  
>  Into the red  
>  Eye, the cauldron of morning."

Then she adds, “Ariel,” she says as if a name from a children’s story were an explanation. “Miss Giddy had me draw the words on her. They stuck with me.” She pauses then shakes her head as though clearing out dust. “I named my first car _Ariel_.”

Max nods, his eyes steady on her face as she stares off into nothingness. He wants to pull her to his chest, to fold his arms around her shoulders. “An arrow without a target… it's still an arrow.” But arrows without targets have no archers or bows. Arrows without targets roll off tables.

“I just spent so long with a singular focus. I never considered that there might come a time when that focus would be gone but not me.” She drops into a squat then pivots so she is facing the target with her knee against the ground. “Now Joe…” she shakes her head and smiles, this time actually letting the white of her teeth catch the light. She fires. _Thunk._ “ _That_ was a bonus. There was a part of me though, that thought all my anger would die with him, that at least that small part of me would be fixed.”

“Doesn’t work like that.”

“Don’t I know it.” She digs her toes into the dirt.

Max’s eyes wander about the garden while she speaks, and they land on a lazily closed sack of still-dirty potatoes. He can’t fix her, not that she really needs it; he can’t fix anything, but he can distract her. Furiosa is about to shoot again when Max asks, “Want to try something?”

Her eyes glitter in the moonlight. “What?”

He takes a potato from the top of the bag, a potato just a little less lumpy than the others, and he runs his thumb over its skin. He smiles to himself and selects another. Then he crosses the clearing and relishes in letting his left foot drag, the sounds of metal scrapping echoing off the butte and filling the silence with playful tension. 

Furiosa purses her lips then scoffs when he sets the second potato atop the sandbag. “Move, Fool.”

“No.” He stands beside it defiantly and sets the second potato on top of his own skull. Once it has settled into his hair, he folds his arms and breathes, relaxing into himself and riding the surge of adrenaline in his chest. “Go on.”

He watches her face tighten then her eyes lift. “Don't be stupid,” she chides, but there's a definite smile to her voice.

Max's heart pounds, but isn't the harsh jolt of panic from being spooked. This is something else, something he’s chosen, something that almost enjoyable. “’m not.”

### 

This is exactly the kind of thing her boys would do to prove their courage or simply pass the time, but crazy as Max may be, he's not kamakrazee. She's not a half-grown pup learning her way around weapons either. She aims. 

_Thehnk_. Her bolt sticks in the first potato. It shifts but doesn't fall from the sandbag. 

She draws the crossbow. She purses her lips as she pulls the last bolt from her chest wrappings and presses her finger against the head. She exhales slowly, timing her breath to the bolt’s progress as she slides it up the centre slot. 

"Last chance,” Furiosa announces, her weapon and attention still trained on Max. She pushes the safety forward and aligns her sights with the dark lump on top of his head.

His shape is still in the moonlight, his face all long shadows and illuminated planes. His lips part to allow a single exhale. She slips her finger in the trigger well and squeezes. 

_Thenk. Thohnk_.

Max bends to retrieve the potato. He’s beaming at her when he stands. His hand shakes as he hands over her prize, and his breath is a bit ragged, but his smile is unwavering.

She studies the potato and gauges the distance between its edge and the hole left by her bolt. She didn’t quite hit centre. She wets her lips and glances up at Max. “Can I try again?"

**Author's Note:**

> Not all crossbows take bolts with fletching, but mine does... write what you know, right?
> 
> Wordburger is from "Ariel" by Sylvia Plath.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A New Vantage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11826819) by [Donda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donda/pseuds/Donda)




End file.
